Tria G.

Overview
Assumption Antipolo’s Guidance department has a project which involves therapy dogs to partake in videos to show for the students.

Problem statement
Given the online class setting, the guidance department of the school wanted to create a project that would showcase their partnership with the therapy dogs. They wanted a dog to tour the campus to the students, and also show the online class situation through the dogs. The videos will be presented to the students to start the new school year.

Role & audience
I am the videographer for this project. I also did some filming, script writing, and was the sole editor for the videos. The audience will be mainly be the school community of Assumption Antipolo, which includes the students, parents, teachers, and staff.

Process
Briefing & discussion
My old school contacted me regarding a video project they wanted to make. Given the current pandemic, they wanted to make use of the online platform as a way to still be there for the students. Thus, the guidance department of Assumption Antipolo in collaboration with Communitails to create videos with therapy dogs

First video — “Ramen School Tour”
For the first video, the guidance counselors gave me a rough script and flow of the filming that we will be doing. I had to go to Assumption Antipolo to film the first video. The school was empty since there were no students, totally different from what I remember during the old days. We followed the covid protocols and together with two of my friends (aka production assistants in this case) ran around following Ramen, the therapy dog, for hours to tour around the school for the video.

Ramen school tour teaser

Made with Adobe Premiere Pro

Second video — “Online Learning with Ramen and Friends”
The second installment of the Ramen series featured her other dog therapy friends. They gave me a rough script again, but told me to add and revise it with the script and scenes that would be better for the video. I edited the script and added reference photos/videos for the owners’ to film their dogs. This video focuses on the reality of the online learning classes, seen in the perspective of the dogs. Featuring animations and self-filmed videos from the owners, the final video showcased a day in the current learning environment experienced by the students.

Editing
Since, of course, the dogs can’t talk, their persona and mood should be portrayed through the editing of the video. I did this by adding the doggy talking subtitles or text captions, fun music, photo and video pop ups, and emoticons to go with the dog videos. The main value was to give joy towards the students, especially the little ones, in the midst of the suspension of classes. Just like how the dogs have given the students therapy during regular classes, through the videos, the same kind of comfort or joy from the cuteness should still be felt and experienced when watching the videos.

Results and lessons learned
The teaser and the first video were posted on Assumption Antipolo’s Facebook page. The teaser had 6,000 views and the the first video has 9,500 views. The second video was uploaded in the schools MS teams. Many of the students and teachers loved the video series, and found it cute and amusing.

"Hello Tria! Just want to share with you that many of our students and teachers liked the video of Ramen. Sobra silang natuwa at namiss lalo ang AA. Nagviral sya sa MS Teams stream. Dun kasi sya inupload! Looking forward sila to more videos! I mean nagtrending sya! 😄 " — One of Assumption Antipolo's guidance counselors

Project takeaways
For the first video, I had to film the footage, which is something I haven’t done in a while. It was tiring during the film day and I was grateful that I had my friends with me to help me. I realized how I needed more equipment like a stabilizer or a good mic that I should consider investing on soon, given this kind of setup wherein we had to follow Ramen the therapy dog around the campus and each counselor had to talk individually. Additionally, the kind of video was unique since the main characters aka the dog themselves do not talk. It is up to the video editing to make sure that the right emotions are projected. Video production involves a lot of aspects from footage, editing, motion graphics, etc. When one watches the video, it is our job to relay the message and feelings we want them to experience. Every sound, type of font, colors or filters, and even video angles should be considered to properly tell the story to the audience.

Thank you to Ms. Liz Abad, Ms. Olive Say, and Ms. Josie Valencia for trusting me on creating the videos! It was a pleasure to make videos for my old school. Special mention also to my friends, Clarisa Guerrero and Kristel Oliveros, who went to campus with me and assisted me in filming.

Other Videography works